


needs and wants

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Post-Solo: A Star Wars Story, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-21 17:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16581149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “What do you want?” he asked again and this time he wasn’t surprised when she answered with the truth. Not in words, but with the press of her mouth against his, the tightening of her hands in the precious silk of his shirt, no doubt wrinkling it beyond repair. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, though, not when her lips were so soft, remembered the shapes and motions he loved best, pulling him inexorably to her.





	needs and wants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeste9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/gifts).



It wasn’t Lando’s intention to find Qi’ra again. After Savareen, it seemed like a bad idea all around. Power vacuums and sudden shifts in leadership tended to read that way to him. Lando wouldn’t have called himself a cynic, but he’d always known Qi’ra would end up where Dryden had been—if not higher up, should the rumors about who was truly running Crimson Dawn end up being true. Sure, he might not have thought it would happen quite so soon, but he’d been wrong before. Though it itched like a poorly made, synthetic suit, he had to admit: he hadn’t expected the outcome that filtered to him through grapevine after grapevine of traded stories.

He was out of the business. For good this time. He only kept his ear to the ground out of curiosity and self-preservation.

Better the enemy you know.

And Qi’ra was nothing if not supremely smart and capable. Worse, she respected Lando and what he could do. Not that he was equipped the way he should have been. Without L3 and without the _Falcon_ , he felt like he was missing half of himself. That ship and droid had gotten him through a million scrapes that he was sure his new freighter wouldn’t even begin to touch. He worried that she would come calling one day and ask something of him that he just couldn’t give, not like this, like he was walking around with one hand tied behind his back.

Tamping down on his knee-jerk annoyance at Han kriffing Solo, he scrubbed his hand across his face and slid the keycard to his hotel room across the panel by the door. It’d been a long, fruitful night and Lando intended to sleep like the dead. And then he’d get up tomorrow and do the same thing over and over and over until he had enough credits to buy a better ship. Then maybe he’d race for a bit until he made even more credits and maybe one day he’d retire to a nice, private corner of the galaxy where he didn’t have to worry about people like Qi’ra or Han or anyone who might want him to do shit he didn’t want to do.

He wasn’t in any good position to decline was the thing. Ever since he took that job, he’d had to scrape by. He didn’t like it. More than that, he didn’t want any of the people he used to know seeing him this way, not until he solves his solvency problem at least.

Which was, perhaps, why he somehow found Qi’ra in his hotel room, sitting on his bed, her hands folded primly in her lap, the clothing she wore utterly beautiful and immaculate, the lines of each piece cut just so. Dressed entirely in black, she looked like Crimson Dawn’s leader. If he hadn’t already known, he definitely would not have been surprised to hear it.

“Hello, Qi’ra,” he said, with far less enthusiasm than he might have shown for her in the past. Perhaps it was unfair of him to be so uncordial. They were friends of a sort. And yet, his heart lodged in his throat at seeing her here. She wanted something probably. Worse, because this was Qi’ra, he was unlikely to get her out of his room with a little sweet talk. They knew each other too well. “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”

There was no point in asking her how she knew where he was. Qi’ra often found out the very things you wanted to keep most hidden. It was part of what had made her such an effective syndicate lieutenant. He could see now that it also served her well as its leader. That just didn’t seem fair.

“Do I need a reason to want to see you?” Qi’ra replied and he had to give this to her, it was good. It sounded good. Genuine. She was still able to reflect earnestness in the wideness of her eyes, the downward slant of her lips. Lando almost bought it. And then he remembered that Qi’ra only felt what best served her needs and tossed aside what little sympathy he could muster. It was replaced almost immediately with complete and utter respect. She seemed to realize he didn’t entirely believe her when her eyes cut away, settled on a spot on the far wall near the floor. “Lando, I—”

He raised his hand and shook his head. Pulling his cape free from his shoulders, he hung it on the peg next to the door. “Do you want a drink?” he asked. “I think I could use a drink. I’m afraid I don’t have the mint for a julep, but…”

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she answered, an edge to her voice now. And that was just fine. She could be annoyed with him if she wanted to be. It was no different than how he felt at the moment, too. A whisper-thin silence fell as he mixed a pair of scotches and soda. At any moment, one or the other might be poised to break it, say something neither of them particularly wanted to hear. Lando bit his lip to keep from speaking. He wasn’t worried that Qi’ra would hurt him, but it never suited to alienate the leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in the galaxy, not even if she was your friend.

At least, he thought they were still friends. The whole thing on Savareen might have changed that, he supposed. They hadn’t exactly talked about it.

Lando didn’t want to talk about it; he wanted to go back to living his life while she was his friend somewhere far, far away from him.

It seemed like the safest thing for both of them.

Lando brought her drink to her. The glass was cool in his hands, a perfect counterpoint to the warmth of her palm as their fingers brushed in the exchange.

“How are you?” Qi’ra asked after a moment. Her voice sounded smaller than he liked, but he didn’t have a good reason to be so concerned about it. Whatever problems she had were hers and she wouldn’t appreciate it if he found it in himself to pity her. Even before, she hated it when anyone showed her the least bit of kindness. Respect, she didn’t mind. Nor politeness. But kindness? That had never gone over very well with her.

That was just fine with Lando. He wasn’t very good at being kind. Nobody in their line of work was.

“Same old, same old,” Lando answered after a moment’s thought. He injected his voice with the pompous self-certainty he was sure she expected of him. But things had changed. It was harder than ever to pretend he hadn’t taken a grand stumble, that he hadn’t lost everything and didn’t quite know how to keep going. A familiar smile plastered itself across his mouth; he hoped he was the only one who noticed how awkwardly it pulled at his cheeks, how brittle it truly was. “There’s always a market for parting fools from their credits.”

That got the smallest twitch of amusement from Qi’ra and she nodded, both in recognition and understanding. She, too, made it her business to part fools from their credits; she was just more successful at it than Lando. Not that he ever wanted to admit as much to her, but even so. There wasn’t a person in the galaxy who was as successful as Qi’ra, not in the criminal underworld at least. And even outside of it, she was successful. There was a time when he would have envied her that. Now he saw the price of it and he wanted only so much to do with it.

He was smart; he wasn’t a saint. Just touching a piece of it was enough. Peeling bits from the leviathans of the galaxy was enough.

Staying out of the big-time players’ way, not quite as much his thing, but he was learning how to be more circumspect. Play minor shell games, small-time cons. Keep it simple. Keep himself safe. Keep himself at least somewhat in the manner in which he’d grown accustomed. It was a good life he pursued, if not the life he imagined for himself back when he considered himself a sportsman and had believed himself capable of leaving the smuggling game entirely.

“You’ve done well for yourself,” Qi’ra replied, as diplomatic as anyone could be under the circumstances. “Though we both know you could be doing better.”

He wagged his finger and huffed in amusement. “That is,” he said, finishing up the drink before handing it over to her. The ice clinked just so, cooled the glass just so. This was the finest scotch this side of the galaxy and Lando knew it. Qi’ra would shortly find out. “That is not going to work on me, my dear. I don’t go in for flattery these days. It’s never gotten me anywhere good.” He cut a sly look her way regardless. Coming out of her mouth, he couldn’t say he hated it. In fact, it sounded very, very pretty. Very, very nice. He would’ve given a lot to hear more of it even knowing it was all a load of bantha shit. Qi’ra wanted something, plain and simple, and she would get it by any means at her disposal.

Saying nice things was only the cleanest way to go about it. Perhaps it made for a nice change of pace for her. But what did Lando know, really? Maybe she enjoyed the cruelty her reputation purported her to have. It didn’t quite map with the Qi’ra Lando knew, but it had been a few years since they’d seen one another. Sometimes, things change. That Qi’ra did whatever she had to do in order to survive, but she didn’t particularly enjoy it, not when it was bad things she was being forced to do.

“Is it flattery if it’s true?” Qi’ra asked and it might as well have been a far-off philosophical question. The meat of it didn’t matter. Whether it was true or not was beyond the point, unable to be seen from this tiny speck of a planet Lando had found himself on. When all he did was level a look in her direction, she rolled her eyes. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t need anything from you?”

“No,” Lando answered. “Everybody always need something.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he crossed his arms. Sipping his own drink, he bit his lip and considered her. Her features, as always, were porcelain still, mask-like. But he saw the cracks wondered what it would be like to prod at them. It wasn’t his right to do that, but that had never stopped a scoundrel before. “What is it you need, I wonder.”

She thrust out the glass, empty already, and said, “Another drink, probably. If you’ll ever learn how to pour a decent one anyway.”

He laughed again and took the glass. This time, he was even more generous with the scotch. He’d done pretty well for himself this time around. He could afford to be generous. “I’ll just leave out the soda entirely, shall I?”

“Might be a good place to start.”

He returned the glass to her. This time, there was no way she could complain. It felt like he’d poured half the bottle into the glass. She didn’t even seem to notice it. He watched as she swallowed a third of it in one go and arched his eyebrow, vaguely impressed. There was an advantage here if he wanted to take it from her. She was, after all, a notorious stickler for not getting drunk where anyone could see it. He’d never known why, other than the usual, prudent reasons. It was too much of a risk. Alcohol loosened lips and loose lips told the kind of tales scoundrels lived for.

Lando had suffered as a result of drink and he’d done the opposite as a result of someone else’s drinking, too. There was power in it. If he would only but take it.

He opened his mouth to pry, hoping secrets would spill from Qi’ra’s lips, something to have over on the leader of Crimson Dawn.

And he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t bring himself to say anything other than, “Well, shit. It’s one of those kind of nights, is it?”

Qi’ra sighed and to Lando’s ears she sounded grateful. Grateful. To him. For nothing more than an acknowledgment that she might’ve been having a bad day. It made something twinge deep in his chest, something he didn’t like. It wasn’t that he was opposed to having a conscience about things, but he found it inconvenient as all hell. And this was Qi’ra they were talking about. He couldn’t exactly see her wanting anything out of him that might’ve been sympathy. Definitely she wouldn’t have wanted anything that seemed even remotely like pity. 

“What do you need?” Lando asked, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. No reason to make her feel like he knew what was going on—he didn’t, not really, though he had a hunch. The hell of it was, he understood. It was easy to let the ache of loneliness swell inside of him, too, and threaten to consume everything else. It was why he liked to keep himself busy; when he did that, he didn’t exactly have time to consider what it was he was losing along the way. “How can I help?”

He hoped he wasn’t reading her wrong, that she wasn’t going to try roping him into doing something he did not want to do.

“I’m not even sure what it is I want,” Qi’ra said. She brushed her hand across her face and got to her feet. She made like she was gonna go for the door, which was her right, but now Lando was invested in seeing this through, finding out why she was here. She wanted to be convinced of something or else she never would have folded even this much. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Lando. I hope everything is well for you.”

He quickly deposited his half-empty drink on the small bar, glass clacking against the bottles in his haste, and reached for her, took her glass and got rid of it, too. “We used to be friends, Qi’ra,” he pointed out as he grabbed her forearm, not trying to guilt her, but definitely working their relationship to his own advantage in order to get an answer. He didn’t want to admit he was worried about her, but he maybe was, just a little bit. They used to be friends and Lando might have liked to still consider them friends.

Maybe just not the kind of friends who worked with and for one another. That, that he could have lived without. Qi’ra always had gotten him into trouble, but he wasn’t interested in the kind of trouble she could generate now that she had all of Dryden Vos’s power and twice his savvy. 

“I know,” Qi’ra said, and she sounded so sad about that, too. She wrapped her fingers around his. They were still cold from the drink. Lando tried to suppress a shiver.

They’d been something else, too, a couple of times, on especially bad nights or exceptionally good. That reminder sent an old, welcome frisson of excitement through him. His eyes searched her face, his body warming as she looked at him, really looked at him, and understood. And then she blushed, just a little bit, and sighed. “It’s been a long time,” she said, careful. The leader of Crimson Dawn had to be careful.

“Is this why you’re here?” he asked. This, he could do. Hell, this would be good. Good for him and for her. He knew what it was she felt; he felt it, too. It pressed against his skin, not painful, but insistent, and it never really seemed to go away.

“I didn’t think it was,” she admitted, not a no, but not a yes either. And Lando wasn’t quite that conceited—not that others wouldn’t disagree with that assessment and vehemently—didn’t believe she’d come here with that specifically in mind, but now that they were here, he couldn’t exactly feel bad about the possibility, but he wouldn’t gloat, wouldn’t use the situation to gloat at her. Back in the day, he might have teased a little bit, but they’d both come too far for him to dismiss authenticity and vulnerability.

She looked, for the first time in a long, long while, like she was experiencing both. Lando wasn’t up to taking that from her.

“What do you want?” he asked again and this time he wasn’t surprised when she answered with the truth. Not in words, but with the press of her mouth against his, the tightening of her hands in the precious silk of his shirt, no doubt wrinkling it beyond repair. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, though, not when her lips were so soft, remembered the shapes and motions he loved best, pulling him inexorably to her.

She’d always been good. He suspected she always would be.

It was her gift. It was, quite probably, her curse just as well.

“Don’t ask,” she said, her breath ghosting across his mouth. The fan of her eyelashes lifted as she looked up at him. For a moment, she looked delicate, a little frail, brittle and breakable. It was an illusion at best. And one he wanted to be free of. It wasn’t her brittleness that drew him to her. “There’s nothing I want right now that I don’t already have.”

He accepted her answer, nodded and pushed her back toward the bed. She went willingly, a smile beginning to bloom across her mouth. One of relief, maybe, that in this she didn’t have to worry about how it came across, what it would cost her. There was no more payment that Lando would exact from her than a night of mutual affection and pleasure.

That was the only price he’d ever exacted for these nights.

“What would you like to talk about instead?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her neck. She tilted her head back, exposing more of her throat to Lando’s touch. Her hands found the long line of his hips, her fingers slipping between the belt loops of his trousers. They didn’t particularly need to talk, he supposed, but he enjoyed the thought of doing so anyway, dragging words out of her as easily as he drew sighs. They could have been meaningless words for all he cared; he just wanted her to speak.

“I don’t know,” she replied, perhaps the most truthful thing she’d said to him in a long time. Maybe ever. Qi’ra of the Crimson Dawn never admitted that she didn’t know something.

As he climbed onto the bed with her, he admitted to himself that it was as good a place to start as any.


End file.
